Over 400 Lethem residents sign on to $600M housing programme

Some 401 residents of the Region Nine township of Lethem have signed on to the Central Housing and Planning Authority’s (CH&PA’s) Lethem Housing Support Programme – a Government-assistance initiative for the Lethem Housing Construction Project.

This was disclosed by Housing and Water Minister Collin Croal on Thursday.
The Lethem Housing Project initiative was announced by President Dr Irfaan Ali during an outreach to that Region Nine township in August of 2022. Valued at $600 million, it entails the Government contributing $1 million to each of 600 low-income homeowners to mitigate the cost of construction of their homes.
President Ali had also announced that the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) and the New Building Society Limited (NBS) would finance the prospective home owners with the remaining $2 million at an interest rate of 3.5 per cent per annum.

This collateral-free gesture from the two financial institutions would see each of the 600 allottees repaying just about $14,000 per month.
Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited is the most recent financial institution to come on board this project.
Speaking during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI) recently, Minister Croal disclosed that the materials and labour for home construction would be procured locally. “The beneficiaries (of) those programmes come from three cluster areas. That is, from the Tabatinga area, Culvert City, as well as our new housing development in Lethem. And those are persons that would have benefitted from an allocation recently,” he said.
He explained that the housing development programme caters to persons who are not financially equipped to construct their homes upon receiving a house lot to begin building their new homes. “So, here you have a programme that has never been implemented before in Guyana, and there is an opportunity for people to own their own homes and start. But the key criterion is that you must own your lot. So those are the persons who are the beneficiaries,” the Minister has said.
This collaboration between the Government and commercial banks sees up to $1.8 billion being injected into the district to promote the housing drive.